Boffins in North Carolina have announced that they are hard at work on a robotic bat which will have a skeleton made of "shape-memory alloy" and flap its wings using electrically powered "metal muscles". The palm-sized robothopter is intended for use as a military surveillance platform, or Micro Air Vehicle (MAV).
The NCSU …

WOW same tech as Battletech

Anyone who's every been into the Battletech universe will know that the muscle's they've descibed are the same tech they descibe as muscles in the big war machines the universe is based around, although they use something like a polymer as the main material in the muscle but it still works on the same principal.

(yup that's the coat there, the one with sad geek written on the back)

Not a good idea for the future

I dread the day this stuff becomes widespread.

The first stupid battle that happens between some moderately powerful adversaries, over some pointless power play, will result in everything that looks like a bird or insect getting vaporised as a potential spy.

@Rob

@this tech was developed quite a while ago

It's still maturing, I've been keeping a lazy eye on it over the years. Most of the chemical reaction "muscles" have issues with speed and others had/have issues with durability and mostly with power. We've been able to make something bat-shaped that will flap it's wings for over a decade, just not fast enough to fly. If they can actually get the speed/power/durability enough to keep this little bat flying it'll be quite a step forward.

See, even if it was working NOW we'd still be decades away from being able to use it to make 50' tall combat mecha, so it doesn't get the large sums of military research money. ;)

I didn't keep up with the eye-implant, but I know they experimented with camera inputs... I suspect it ran into the same headache as most other cybernetic implant tech, the body REALLY does not like having bits jammed into it, and it becomes a pain to power and control.

@ian 22 - Flying monkey-bots?

@BattleTech(tm)

Myomers were the polymer based, electro-resistive/reactive threads that served as "muscles" for the mecha.

The key here is that to be useful, they *DO NOT* need to be particularly durable, just be able to last about 30 days in harsh environments. By being based on plastic, they are expected to be cheap; easy to fabricate - and easy to replace. They are already available for student research: